Big Brother Blues
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Shouri has to grin and bear it. Gwendal shows him how.


**Title: **Big Brother Blues  
**Author: **Peroxidepest17  
**Universe:** Kyou Kara Maou  
**Theme/Topic:** The War Within Myself  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Character/Pairing/s:** Shouri, Yuuri, Gwendal, Conrad (mentions of Wolfram)  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** Vague Spoilers for episodes in the late 60s, I believe?  
**Word Count: **1,249  
**Summary:** Shouri has to grin and bear it. Gwendal shows him how.  
**Dedication:** pyrefly's second prize drabble for answering 2 questions right on my little quiz- Shouri is hard! **  
A/N:** Haha I'm not sure if this even fulfills the request, but it's kind of there. Vaguely. Maybe? Yeah.**  
Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

Shouri grit his teeth.

Gwendal arched an eyebrow, but didn't look up from his current knitting project. "Don't look," he warned the Earth Maou.

"But it's…"

"Don't look," Gwendal repeated, simply.

Shouri made a pained sound. "Cameras. How do you all not have cameras here?"

Gwendal didn't answer that. "Shouri-sama," he started again, calmly, "as a person who has watched _two_ little brothers grow up, I would hope that you would cede to my greater experience on the matter."

"But…"

"It's best if he doesn't lose respect for you when he sees that expression on your face, Shouri-sama," Gwendal persisted reasonably, concentrating a great deal on the scarf he was knitting.

Shouri turned to the soldier at that, and looked absolutely like a kicked puppy. "Well what am I supposed to do then?" he asked, and reminded Gwendal of himself a long time ago.

He paused in his knitting then, and slowly looked around the room (except NOT at what Shouri was staring at) before leaning in closer to the young man. "I like cute things too," he whispered, like it was some sort of great and terrible secret. He gestured next, to the knitting needles in his hands. "That's why I started… well, you know."

Shouri paled, looking incredulous. "So your advice is that I… I mean, you want me to…"

Gwendal shrugged, leaned back and sat up straighter in his chair. "There's nothing wrong with it," he stated gravely, and Shouri rather wondered if this was his way of acting wounded.

"Well, no, of course not. I just… I guess, I don't know how good at it I'd be. I've never really had the patience for… and…" he snuck a glance back onto the dance floor. "There's no way it could possibly…"

He cringed when he saw Yuuri stumble mid-twirl and Conrad quickly—expertly by now—catch him, warm and supportive and looking straight into the young king's eyes when he said, "You've almost got it, Yuuri."

Yuuri laughed sheepishly, two bright pink spots of embarrassment blossoming on his cheeks as he thanked Conrad for the save and told him, "I'm still not quite used to the dress yet."

Shouri grit his teeth again.

Gwendal made a knowing sound in the back of his throat.

"Argh… why does he have to be so _cute_! Why do they have to make him wear a _dress_? It's so _adorable!"_ he bemoaned, and slid down in his chair, defeated. "It's like when he was three all over again."

Gwendal made another sympathetic grunt-type noise before finishing off a row and setting his knitting down. "A tradition of one of our smaller border allies," he explained. "All attendees of formal events under the age of eighteen are required to wear _women's_ formal wear. An uprising a couple hundred years ago by the women of the land changed laws so that young men would be socialized to learn and sympathize with the plight of their young women from an early age."

"Very forward thinking," Shouri had to admit.

"A pain for visiting magistrates. Young ones, anyway," Gwendal added, rather needlessly in Shouri's book. "Try not to stare."

Shouri wanted to cry. "But he's so _cute_!"

Gwendal remembered all to well, the feeling. "You should have seen Conrad and Wolfram's first formal dances there," he muttered-- a small, embarrassed concession to the similarly suffering young man across the table from him. "Canary yellow and baby pink, respectively."

Shouri took a deep breath and shakily removed his glasses from his face to clean them. "This is the world's hardest job," he told Gwendal, rubbing the lenses of his spectacles a bit too roughly with the hem of his shirt. It kept his gaze focused downward, anyway.

"Mm," Gwendal agreed.

"And in the end they don't understand…they just think we're _jerks_ and…" he sighed, sounding hopeless. "That dress is _so cute_."

Gwendal eyed him. He looked so lost—so young despite the fact that he too, was an oldest sibling. After a moment, the grey-haired mazoku sighed and leaned to his side, digging in the small bag he kept his yarn and other supplies in.

Shouri watched him wearily, and when two brand new knitting needles were pushed up in front of his face, he didn't quite object, though he didn't quite take them either. "So this is it huh?" he said instead, and sounded prime for surrender.

Gwendal simply nodded.

Shouri—after a moment of debate—reached out and took the needles. Put his glasses back on his face, sat up straight again.

"Okay," he said, and took a deep breath. He did his damndest not to look out on the dance floor again too, even when he heard his precious little brother's breathless laughter and wanted a camera _so_ _damned bad_. "Okay."

Gwendal reached into his knitting bag again and paused, eying the youth at his side, waiting for one final confirmation.

"Show me how," Shouri said, exhaling shakily.

"It only feels like giving up for now," Gwendal advised him sagely, and even handed him the nice lamb's wool in hunter green he'd been saving for another project.

"Thanks," Shouri responded.

In the meantime, sensing his brother not sending him any more strange looks of death from across the room— the guy really was way too uptight sometimes— Yuuri paused and stood on his toes to see what was going on over Conrad's shoulder. Something clearly had to be wrong for Shouri to get off his back, after all.

"Yuuri?" Conrad asked, and turned to follow his young king's gaze as they stopped moving.

"Is my brother _knitting_?" Yuuri asked, and blinked in wide-eyed disbelief as he stared at the duo sitting at the table.

Conrad smiled then, even chuckled a little bit as he too watched his older brother show Yuuri's how to loop yarn. "Why, I believe he is, your highness."

Yuuri made a face. "What a _weirdo_. Shouri's an absolute weirdo. He doesn't even like that sort of stuff."

Conrad laughed a bit louder then, and the nice sound of it momentarily drew Yuuri's attention away from the odd couple knitting scarves. "Conrad?"

Amusement twinkling in his eyes, the soldier gave a gentle squeeze of the hand resting at the crook of Yuuri's waist and shook his head. "You'll understand one day."

"Understand _what_?"

Conrad didn't answer, simply beamed and twirled Yuuri again. "Concentrate, heika," he urged, warmly. "We have a ball to attend in two days."

"I know, I know! And don't call me that!"

Conrad chuckled to himself as they continued to dance, a gentle look of nostalgia in his eyes as he watched Yuuri slowly but surely begin to figure out how to maneuver the mess of silk and frills he was wearing across the ballroom. And for a brief moment, Conrad was reminded of himself, young and in yellow and lace, learning how to curtsey properly for the very first time. Even more vividly than that though, he remembered being scolded not to stare at the image of a very young Wolfram with pearled ribbons in his hair, dressed in pink and crying adorably because the stockings made him itchy.

And in that moment—reliving that memory-- Conrad's heart went out to poor Shouri-sama, who was still sitting across the room concentrating furiously on his knitting lesson so he wouldn't concentrate on anything else instead.

It really was rather difficult being an older brother, Conrad thought.

Especially in a kingdom where no one had a camera.

**END**


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